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BG Tanzenberg

BG Tanzenberg welcomes you to a school year in Austria. Here are some information about the Austrian education system:

I Austria kids have to go one year to the Kindergarten compulsory. But you can take even three years. Usually school starts at the age of six. There the kids go to the "Volksschule" wich is quite the same thing as elementary school. Then they can go to a Gymnasium ( in Austria the word "Gymnasium" is not the same as in English, it means a type of school) like our school (BG is for "Bundesgymnasium") or to a "Hauptschule" (you can compare it with the junior high). A Gymnasium lasts from the fifth to the 12th or from the ninth to 12th grade. But you can leave it after the first 4 years. A Hauptschule lasts from the fifth to the 8th grade. After the the first four years of the Gymnasium or after the Hauptschule you can go to an economic school like the HTL. In a HTL you learn to work with machines or with computers. This schools last five years. In Austria you have to go to schools for nine years compulsory. So after the first 8 years you can make the ninth year and go learning a job after this. After the Gymnasium or the economic school you take the Matura. It´s like the SAT or the ACT. What is more is that you can go learning a job and make the Matura the same time. After the Matura you can go to a university.

Tanzenberg is not a school where you learn technical stuff. It´s more about languages especial old ones. Latin is compulsory away from the seventh grade. Away from the ninth you can even take Ancient Greek like I did. It´s awesome, it´s my favourite subject with distance. We have a great teacher and it´s very interesting. Then there are the usual subjects like Maths, English and German. My least favourite subject is Maths but i think many kids round the world think so.

There are also many extra-curricular activities wich are offered in Tanzenberg like soccer, snowboarding, floorball, chess, drama or Slovenian. I do snowboarding and floorball, it´s really great fun all the time and a good balance to the school.

I looked up for High Schools in the US in the WWW and found the Pine View School in Sarasota. Subjects they offer we do not have are for exempel Chinese or Astronomy.

If you have any more questions, write to us!